5 Tips for Preventing Child Identity Theft

Think your child isn't at risk of becoming yet another victim of identity theft? Think again. The FTC estimates that over 140,000 children are victims of ID theft every year, and the Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Child ID Theft Report showed that children are 51 times more likely to experience ID theft than adults.

Preventing child identity theft can be difficult because kids are easier targets than adults. Their Social Security numbers are unused so it's easier to associate different names and birth dates with them. Their identities are typically a blank slate and the likelihood of discovery is low since most parents don't monitor their children's identities.

The crime can go unnoticed for many years, often until they try to open a bank account or apply for a driver's license, job, student loan, or credit as a young adult. By then their identity could have been stolen and sold multiple times by thieves using it to obtain credit cards, insurance, medical services, employment, housing, passports, government benefits, and loans. The list goes on and on.
Safeguarding your child from identity theft begins with recognizing the signs, such as receiving unsolicited credit card offers or bills in his or her name. Here are five tips for preventing child identity theft:

1. Don't disclose Social Security numbers. Your child's Social Security number is the most important piece of personal information to protect. If an organization requests your child's Social Security number, ask how it will be used and how it will be protected. As the prevalence of ID theft has grown, providing a Social Security number is typically not required unless there are tax implications.

2. Request your child's credit report. The credit reporting agencies don't keep credit reports for minors because they aren't allowed to open lines of credit. If your child has a credit report, you know ID theft has been committed.
 
3. Get a crosscut shredder and put it to work. Shred all documents you receive in the mail that contain your child's personal information. Remember that mail such as unsolicited credit card offers are indicators of child identity theft, so shred these documents right away. (Don't forget to do this for yourself as well.) Then contact the credit bureaus to see if there's a credit file in your child's name.

4. Don't carry around your child's Social Security number. Preventing child identity theft also includes locking up his or her Social Security number with other important personal identity records such as birth certificates and passports, and only access it when you absolutely need it. Locking up all private information is generally a good idea to prevent houseguests or babysitters from viewing it.

5. Monitor your child's social networking accounts. Identity thieves troll social networking websites, so make sure private information like date of birth, address, and names of family members are not included in profiles. It's also a good idea to set privacy settings so your child's profile can only be viewed by friends and family.

In addition to these do-it-yourself precautions, you can start proactively preventing child identity theft by relying on a trusted company like Entrust America. Entrust America will protect you and your family from all forms of ID theft, and is the only company with a proprietary partnership with law enforcement nationwide to recover identities and ensure you get back to pre-theft status.

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Cyber Crimes and the Law

Defining Cyber crime is not so simple and perhaps that is why there has not been a single definition that is collectively approved by all the law enforcing bodies. However, the below mentioned definition is a commonly accepted and generally used definition by Various US law enforcing bodies:

"A criminal offense in which the computer is involved as an object of crime or as a tool for committing an offense's material component."
If you find yourself under criminal investigation for cyber crime then you should definitely seek legal advice. It is always better to have some knowledge about the law and crime that you are dealing with in order to save yourself from any unjust or undeserving sentences. Further, it will help you in avoiding any activity that may break the cyber law and put you in trouble.
Some of the most common and well defined internet crimes are:

• Child pornography: Online predators targeting children are in the top hit list of FBI. Child pornography is considered a very serious crime and even the possession of one such picture can land you in prison for five years. According to 18 U.S.C 110, Sexual Exploitation and Other Abuse of Children, the punishment for such a crime can be up-to 15 years in federal prison.
• Cyber stalking: Like the stalking in the real world, people can also stalk others over internet. Cyber stalking falls under the category of harassment and is a punishable offence.
• Scams and fraud: Fraud is actually a very broad term and covers a lot of different actions and activities. Basically, these crimes are dishonest acts which are done in order to gain monetary benefits.
• Trademark violations: Like it sounds, the trademark violations are those crimes where the registered trademark of one business is used by some other third party over the internet, with or without intent.
• Copyright violations: Copyright violations are perhaps the most common online activity. Copying content from any other source on the internet and using it for personal purpose without citing and linking to the source is considered as copyright violation.
• Computer and network hacking: These are the cyber crimes which are related to computer as well as network dealings. Such crimes include hacking, website defacing, creating and distributing computer viruses maliciously etc.
• Credit card hacking: Credit card hacking also falls under fraud cases but it is now a very common crime therefore we would point it out separately. The credit card information of users is retrieved and hacked by unauthorized personals who intend to use it for personals gains.
• Bank account hacking: Just like credit card hacking, the bank card hacking also involves access of bank account information of users. This information is then usually used for transferring funds to other accounts.

The first law against cyber crime was enacted in 1984 and was called "The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act". CFAA is the most important computer statute in US as all the other statutes concerned with above problems come by modifying the CFAA.
Further, in 1986 "Electronic Communication Privacy Act" was enacted which actually was an amended version of wiretap law. According to this law, intercepting, using, accessing or disclosing of transmitted or stored electronic communications without authorization is illegal.

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Can I Copyright My Website?

Can I Copyright My Website?-Although copyright protection comes into existence automatically upon you creating a work which satisfies the requirements of copyright, it is often a good idea to have evidence that you created something on a particular date just in case there is later a dispute regarding who owns the copyright in your creations. A third party may say that you have copied their work. Having each draft of your work marked with a time and date stamp and signed can help you prove ownership in a dispute between the third party.

If you are creating your website from scratch, it is advisable to place a copyright notice on your website to indicate that you own the copyright and to record the date of your creation. Your website may take a while to create if you are developing it yourself. Therefore as you create each page or even each element of your website which is copyrightable, such as a drawing or another element that could attract copyright protection it is a good idea to keep a record of all of the drafts and revisions you have created so you have evidence of what dates you created work various works within your website.

A technique authors use when creating websites and any other kinds of copyright is to post a copy of the works you prepare to yourself with the dates on them so that you have further proof of the date that they were created by you. If you are creating content, source code, computer programs, databases that may qualify for protection, images or photos then you may undertake various iterations before being satisfied with the final result. It would be a good idea to keep all of these drafts so you have a complete set of drawings of pictures or drafts of text as they evolved. This may help you in an ownership dispute. This is known as "poor man's copyright" and it does have it's limitations as a method of proving ownership.

Sometimes you may either consider registering your copyright with the USPTO or alternatively involving a third person who can perhaps verify that you created the work and keep a separate copy of your work in their possession. They may be a Solicitor, a Notary or an Escrow Service. There are ways that third parties have cast doubt upon the credibility of the method of "poor man's copyright" as a method of proving ownership. There are commercial services who may be able to assist you if you wanted to do more than post the work to yourself but cannot afford the expense and trouble of registering your work with the UPSTO.

You can only claim copyright if you are the author of an original work and didn't copy it from another source. This is another factor you need to keep in mind when creating your website. If you are going to use a work as a source of inspiration for your website, even if you feel that you have altered a work so that you have made it your own, it is always safer to merely contact the third party and ask whether you have permission to use their work. Otherwise you may be found liable for copyright infringement, as questions of copyright can be subjective and it is not always easy to predict with certainty whether you will have any defence available to you such as fair dealing or fair use. There are many creative commons licences works which you can make use of to create your website which you might find suitable. It is also sometimes easy to sub-consciously copy a work without intending to. This has happened to musicians who didn't intentionally copy another person's work.

Registration with the USPTO is the most reliable way of proving ownership of your work. If you register your work with the US Copyright Office you can be assured that it is filed on public record that you are the owner of various constituent elements of your website and this means you will be eligible to recover damages and legal fees if you have registered your copyright and received a certificate of registration which verifies your ownership. By registering in the United States, a Treaty called the Berne Convention which many countries have signed up to, means you will automatically be given the same protection in other countries who are signatories as they would be obliged to provide authors in the United States.

Any original content you post, such as photos, drawings, content you write, movies you make, soundtracks, songs and computer programs you write may be eligible for copyright protection provided you satisfy the other criteria for copyright. You might have placed music on your website which could be protected both as a musical work if you wrote the musical notation and as a literary work if you wrote the lyrics. You may have performance rights depending on the situation under which you recorded the work. However there are limitations to what copyright protection can protect, just as there are with other forms of intellectual property.

For example, copyright isn't intended to protect ideas, new processes or products or new ways of doing things. This is the province of patent law. If you are intending to register your website for copyright protection you should identify all of the possibly protectable elements of the website under copyright law, as you will have the onus of listing the works you seek protection for in your application. When you complete revisions or updates to your website be careful to update them with the registration body. Not all revisions will attract a separate copyright protection especially if they are insubstantial.

Whether or not you are completing a form for registration of the different works which may exist in your website, or merely making note of them for your own records if you decide not to register your copyright works in your website, it is a good idea to list them and identify what kind of copyright they may include. As mentioned above sometimes you will have more than one copyright within one work. You would have a copyright over the musical score and for the lyrics. The same would be true of a multimedia file in the form of a video or a separate sound recordings if you are making a podcast.

It is preferable to itemise each work rather than just state that you wish to acquire copyright over your website or the look and feel of your website, as you may not have a copyright entitlement over the look and feel, as look and feel is more to a trademark related right.

You may have rights over a section of your website which has an original and unique typographical layout of the columns of your website and the juxtaposition of the text and images although this may be difficult to establish. It all depends on the circumstances. Copyright does not give you protection for ideas, rather the expression of ideas. If you have translated your website into another language, you may or may not be entitled to a separate copyright for the foreign translation but once again it will depend on the circumstances. There is some overlap between trademarks and copyright and you may find that if you have developed a logo which is a combination of an artistic work and text you may have an entitlement to register the artistic work separately as a copyright.

If you have written any unique computer program this may constitute a separate literary work. However you cannot claim copyright for ideas or concepts so if you developed a method for shopping on your website or a particular ecommerce solution for your customers you might need to make sure you are not infringing on the many other software patents that exist for e-commerce solutions. It is possible that your methods or processes may qualify for protection but may do so under patent law rather than copyright law.

You cannot copyright your domain name, titles, names or slogans unless there are exceptional circumstances.
If you discover a work online which you believe is an act of infringement of your copyright which is not excused by a defence, then you can always send a Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) Take-Down Notice to the web host asking that material which infringes your copyright is taken down. You will need to provide details of your copyright and signed a sworn statement under penalty of perjury.

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Why You Need To Place Watermarks On Images You Post Online

Why You Need To Place Watermarks On Images You Post Online-If you often upload photos on the net, you must make sure that nobody is using them while not your consent. One straightforward thanks to try this is by watermarking your photos. A photography watermark may be another image as in a very brand, words, or the name of the photographer that is placed over the image. If a photograph includes a watermark, those viewing it'll recognize that they're not allowed to repeat or use your photo while not 1st notifying you or abiding by your necessities. several websites additionally do watermarking on their photos and illustration to warn those visiting the positioning that reproducing or reusing these pictures constitutes infringement.

Watermarks may be created in a very jiffy with very little or no issue as long as you've got the acceptable software. There are variety of software you'll use to try to to watermarking, Photoshop and Corel artistic suites, for example. There are internet applications that allows you to form photo watermarks at no cost. These applications that permit you to create photo watermark at no cost may or may not have batch processing capabilities. several of those programs that enable you to create free watermark photos produce other options further like easy photo editing. lots of those software additionally permit direct uploading of free watermark photos to social networking and image sharing websites.

There are websites that permit you to create photography watermarks and then explore for places where your photos are getting used on the planet Wide internet. This tracking service can assist you monitor for infringement. In most cases, you've got to pay alittle quantity to fancy such capability. In most cases, these websites need you to pay around $30 to $50 a month to continue using the service.

Some photo hobbyists and professionals are reluctant in adding watermarks to their photos as a result of they believe these can negatively have an effect on the planning of the image and stop folks from seeing their work within the very best quality doable. If you're one amongst those folks that subscribe to the present notion, think about using invisible watermarks. because the term implies, an invisible watermark is an overlaid image that can't be seen, however may be detected algorithmically.

Some photographers place an invisible watermark that's destroyed when the image is manipulated digitally. this sort of proof may be admitted in court to support misappropriation lawsuits. the selection of watermarking your photos is yours to create, however bear in mind that doing such will prevent from lots of headache and heartache within the future.

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